Hi,
I built the boost 1.38 libraries from source following the instructions
on the wiki, but this generated about 5 GB of material.
Do I need all of it, or can I trim this down?

These here are the boost headers that PyCUDA includes.
<boost/cstdint.hpp>
<boost/thread/thread.hpp>
<boost/thread/tss.hpp>
<boost/version.hpp>
<boost/ptr_container/ptr_map.hpp>
<boost/format.hpp>
<boost/shared_ptr.hpp>
<boost/python.hpp>
<boost/python/stl_iterator.hpp>
<boost/foreach.hpp>
(This implicitly tells you which Boost libraries are used, and you can
probably infer what you need to keep and what to throw away. Debian's
package management does a pretty good job of modularizing boost.
You might also want to try
http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_42_0/tools/bcp/doc/html/index.html
Disclaimer: I haven't played with this.
I realize boost is a big dependency, but you will find that its
individual parts are actually quite small--it just includes everything
and the kitchen sink [1]. So this is mainly a distribution problem IMO.
Also I stand behind the choice of boost as a supporting library--it's
quality software.
Andreas
[1] http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_42_0/libs/libraries.htm

And apart from 'thread' all the other libraries are just header include files.
I agree that boost needs a bit of trials before getting it right.
Fabrizio
--------------------------
Luck favors the prepared mind. (Pasteur)